The Devil Is a Gentleman
by Konstantya
Summary: "I was thinking of Greece and his myths," she says. "Oh?" he asks, distinctly disinterested. "And am I correct in assuming there's a particular figure of which I remind you?" (In the late 1600s, Austria retrieves Hungary from the Ottoman Empire. A pre-romance sort of AusHun, if you will. Not exactly a Hades/Persephone AU, but...inspired by it, you might say.)


A/N: Inspired (partly) by an image set on tumblr that drew parallels between Austria and Hades. FFN consistently strips URLs out, but if you mosey on over to my AO3 cross-post (same username on both sites), you can find a link.

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**The Devil Is a Gentleman**

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He comes in like death—tall and thin, stern-faced and serious—and sweeps her away from Constantinople in the middle of December. The road to his home is long, and as they draw closer to it, even the land itself begins to resemble death, all bare trees and frozen ground and still air.

Hungary shivers as she sits in front of him on his mount, his long, lean arms around her to hold the reins, and she wonders where the soft, pudgy boy she used to beat up in long-passed summers has gone to—if perhaps he, too, is dead these days.

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He does not speak much, and it's only when they pause to stretch their legs and let the horse drink from an icy stream that he seems to remember she's even with him. She's hugging her arms, watching the grey sky and the way her breath puffs white against it, when she hears him say, "Here." She turns, and just then, there he is, swinging his overcoat over her shoulders.

Hungary stiffens, reflexively trying to throw the garment off, but Austria catches it by the collar and holds it tight around her. His hands incidentally brush her neck with the action, his fingers cold against her skin, and there is something about his grip—some sort of warning in it despite the gallant gesture—that gives her pause and halts any further physical struggling.

"I don't need your coat," she snaps, flushing from anger and maybe something else.

"And I don't need a servant with chattering teeth and blue lips," he shoots back, with all the loftiness of someone used to being obeyed. She notices that his eyes are, indeed, focused on her mouth (are her lips really turning blue?), and somehow the sheer impassiveness of his expression only succeeds in putting her a little more on edge. She never thought she would miss Turkey's teasing leers and lascivious remarks, but she finds she'd rather have his interminable flirtations—annoying though they were—over Austria's almost-inhuman aloofness.

He tugs the coat around her a little bit more, a little more gently now that it's clear she isn't going to fight him on the issue, then finally drops his arms. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," he says, his voice a touch softer if not exactly sympathetic. "You're used to the weather in Constantinople, after all. It only makes sense you'd be cold here."

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When they stop for a short rest, building a small fire and eating a small meal, she thinks about Greece—about the long nights they spent together under Turkey's roof, lamenting their sorry states and sharing their myths. Austria sports no beard as so many of the artistic interpretations apparently do, and his horse may not be black, and she sincerely doubts a three-headed dog guards his house, but the similarities are there all the same. It's an uncharitable thought, to compare him to the god of the underworld, but the past hundred and fifty years have put Hungary in an uncharitable position. She looks at the dried apple he passes to her, and wonders: If she eats it now, will she forever be bound to his domain?

Austria doesn't encourage her to eat, doesn't comment on her lack of appetite or enthusiasm, and for that, at least, she's grateful. He dines quietly, leisurely, brewing coffee and buttering his bread, and she watches him, his manners impeccable even out here, in the middle of nowhere.

After a while, he finally meets her gaze and lifts an eyebrow dryly. "Something on your mind?"

She considers giving him the silent treatment, but the fierce, forever-defiant part of her insists she answer, and truthfully at that. "I was thinking of Greece and his myths," she says.

"Oh?" Austria asks, distinctly disinterested as he takes a drink of coffee and wipes his napkin across his mouth. "And am I correct in assuming there's a particular figure of which I remind you?"

"Yes," she says, taking in his dispassionate face and his features which have sharpened with maturity. "I think you're Hades."

His lips twitch with amusement at that, and though the smile is too small to reach his eyes, Hungary finds herself angered by the expression all the same. She meant it as an insult, and there he is, acting like it's some sort of _joke_. Some cutesy remark not worthy of his ire.

He layers a piece of cured meat with cheese, his hands pale and elegant. "Then I suppose that makes you Persephone?"

Yes, that was the idea, but somehow, hearing him say it suddenly makes the parallel sound perverse. Hades and Persephone were lovers, after all, and the thought of being romantically involved with the stoic, strict man across from her would be laughable if it wasn't so oddly unnerving.

She shakes the notion off, irritated with herself as much as she is with her current set of circumstances. Austria is just a nation, same as her, and hardly frightening with his thin frame and silver-rimmed spectacles and penchant for violin-playing. "Persephone was goddess of the underworld," she points out, a little crossly, "not a servant in it."

"Would you rather I make you my wife, then?" he asks, and again, his blatant disregard combined with the blunt question sends blood rushing to her face. It's infuriating that he should so casually suggest such a thing, and even more infuriating that those should apparently be her only two options these days: servant or spouse. She'd _rather_ be Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, and beholden to nobody but herself.

Austria doesn't wait for an answer, and in hindsight, it was probably a rhetorical question anyway. He takes another drink of coffee and says, "I daresay Hades was a misunderstood deity. He wasn't heartless, but he had an important task to perform and took his duties seriously—even though he may have been hated for it." His eyes catch hers for a brief, meaningful moment, but then he's back to his beverage. "If nothing else," he continues, "at least he didn't go dallying around like his brethren, seducing every nymph and mortal in sight." There is a hard, disapproving note to his voice, and Hungary has to wonder if they're still talking about Greek mythology. She thinks back to Turkey, to his incessant flirting that occasionally slipped into harassment, and pulls Austria's coat a little tighter around her person. It smells of him, of coffee and paper, ink and the Alps.

Well, Hungary allows herself to admit, if she absolutely _has_ to be a servant, then maybe, just _maybe,_ it'll be a nice change of pace to have an employer who doesn't pinch her ass.

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Upon arriving at his house, she immediately takes his coat off and returns it to him. She doesn't say thank you, and he doesn't admonish her for it—he merely slides his arms back into the sleeves and sets about to hitching his horse. His home is large—larger than she remembers from more than a century ago—and Hungary would be lying if she said she didn't find it a little intimidating. She shivers again as she stares up at it, and a moment later, Austria comes to stand next to her, straightening his collar about his neck.

"Hades got stuck with the underworld, you know," he says, bringing her mind back to mythology. "And for what it's worth, I didn't exactly _ask_ to be put in charge of an immature, ill-tempered empire." Hungary thinks she might detect a hint of bitterness in his voice, but as she glances over at him, he gives his coat one final tug, and if there was anything telling about his expression it is gone with that gesture. The cool, collected master of the realm is back—if he ever truly left in the first place—and he briskly says, "Come on, then."

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In April, just as the weather is finally beginning to break, he summons her to his office. She worries her hands in her skirt despite herself, wondering what she has done wrong—because why else would he be requesting her presence if not to reprimand her?—and it's only when he passes her a piece of paper that she blinks, confusion overriding apprehension.

"I'm authorizing a leave of absence for you," Austria explains. "So you can go home and visit your people."

"Are you serious?" she blurts out.

His lips twitch in his sorry excuse for a smile. "Is that so very surprising?"

_A little,_ Hungary thinks, but doesn't say.

He tilts his head and wryly says, "I'm not heartless, you know." The word stirs memories of her arrival months ago, and he adds, a little humorously, "Consider your homeland Demeter; this is where you get to return to your mother."

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Later, she will again think of the story of Hades, and how Persephone grew to love him, and will agree that perhaps he was merely misunderstood. Perhaps he was merely a man who'd been dealt a difficult, lonely hand, and perhaps the both of them—god and goddess alike—were simply trying to carve something sweet out of an unenviable existence.

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A/N: I've said it before, but I basically have dueling head-canons when it comes to Hungary and exactly how much time she spent with Austria before 1700. The one I generally go with (because it's the one canon seems to support) is that she moved in in 1526, after the Battle of Mohács (in which her king died and she ceased to be a sovereign nation), and stayed there throughout the 1600s. However, historically, a hefty chunk of her land was under Ottoman rule by 1526, and in the following decades, the Ottomans proceeded to take over even _more_ of it, until the majority of her land, capital included, was part of their empire. It was only after the Battle of Vienna in 1683 that Austria really started to kick ass and the Ottoman-Habsburg wars (as they were called) took a decisive turn in his direction, with basically all of Hungary successfully being reclaimed in the following fifteen, sixteen years. For that reason I have my second head-canon, employed here, that says, if Hungary _did_ in fact move in with Austria after Mohács, it was only briefly; Turkey soon took her away, and she remained with him all the way up until, well, the time of this fic, AKA: the late 1600s.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this story, despite its rather somber tone. The Hades/Persephone pairing is one of my favorites from Greek mythology, and while I'd made the AusHun connection before (mostly due to the character types, ie: stern, serious guy with bright, cheerful gal), it was the aforementioned image set that really crystalized that connection and made me want to write something around it. And even though I might take long breaks from Hetalia these days, I can never stay away from AusHun for good, so.

So yeah, thanks for reading!


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